West 57th Street

As the building boom of the early 2000s skidded into the quagmire
of the Great Recession, I took a walk down West 57th Street in
Manhattan on a dreary January day to survey the changes. The
street was a transitional zone from both directions. To the north
sat the residential Upper West Side and to the south the office
buildings midtown. On the west were remnants of the industrial
dock feel of earlier eras (with pockets of gentrification) with
a transition to the firmly white-collar Midtown.